what I have learned.....about kitchens and food

Part II in the series.

Finished up work yesterday, everyone was very nice to me and stayed for a few extra minutes in order for us to share a glass of prosecco and toast in my honor, which I appreciated a lot. However I was still perfectly happy to be walking out that door for good, and was greeted by the most amazing sight: it was snowing all yesterday evening, and while Florence isn't quite white, there has been a little bit of accumulation and this morning when I went out I was greeted by that perfect blue sky and crisp air that follows snow, and so someone must really love me. Snow is not common here; the city seems to be in a bit of a panic over it, and everyone is amazed at the wonder of this weather. Also the hills around the city are all dusted with snow now, which just creates this beautiful, powdered-sugar effect (photo not mine, but this is what I saw). Definitely leaving this city on a high note!

So what have I learned about kitchens and cooking? I have learned about the importance of cooking in a clean kitchen. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone..." Most people would not call the kitchen here dirty, but I've worked in very clean kitchens in the states, where you clean everything every day and clean the hard to reach spots, like under the shelves and the back corners of fridges, weekly. I worked for one month and we did those hard to reach spots once, and the daily clean we did was more focused on getting the stainless steel shined than on making sure that things were actually clean. I think it is just part of the whole quality control mentality. Making sure that your kitchen is of the best quality is just another part of making sure that the food is of the best quality. If you don't feel like you're standards of cleanliness are as  high as they can be, then it spills over into your food not needing to be the best it can be. Or maybe I'm going too much into the psychoanalysis on this one. Point being, I get why we clean the corners that can't be reached and why we keep things anally tidy in the states now.

I actually feel like I've learned quite a bit about medieval cookery, oddly enough. We did a lot of braises at the restaurant, and the way those dishes were structured was clearly traceable way back in time. Maybe Italian food just has good connections with its roots or something, but that is a cool bonus to the whole setup.

I think I've learned about sage as an herb and what it can do. I feel a lot more familiar with it, as it is suchc a crucial herb in the cooking here, and would be comfortable playing with it in the future. It also steeps nicely for a tea.

I've also gained a lot more respect and gratefulness for the stages I've done in the past. I was able to realize just how much I've learned from them, how they influenced me, and helped shape my perspective on kitchens in so many ways. I'm hoping that when I start searching for a job next month that this new vision will be able to help me find a place which fits well. I could handle a job I didn't love for a month, I would not be happy there for a year.

From the experience here more generally, I've learned how to make great breads, how to whip up a pasta sauce with anything in the fridge, a new appreciation for donuts, why the foam on a cappuccino matters, and the powers of gorgonzola.

As for this blog, it will be no longer about Italy as I'm about to leave, but if I have the chance I will be using it as I travel the middle east for the next few weeks. So to see pictures and hear news about the next adventure, continue to stay tuned!

what I have learned.....about myself

These next few posts are going to be a bit of a series. I'm trying to sum up my experiences here so I can leave with some recollection of what I've accomplished. Or at least something sentimental, emotional, and all that. So part I, below, is covering what I think I've learned about myself.  Deep, huh?

This is also a continuing part of my "think positive!" campaign, as work has not been a totally positive experience. There have been times when I wanted to just leave, and a large part of it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just that when there isn't enough business to keep one person busy, what do four people do? It was getting to the point where I started trying to work more slowly so that I would be bored less. And "slow" is never a compliment in the kitchen unless you're braising a piece of meat. There was also a passive-aggressive waitress who didn't like me. But I want to leave on a high note, and I don't think that I'm forcing myself to make a silver lining, but rather am just trying to remember the good times.

I've learned a little more about my problems with authority, and at the end of the day they're connected to my problems in dealing with incompetence. Because you see, most authority *is* incompetent. Clearly these problems are interconnected, and at work especially I have learned a lot about how incompetent authority can rub me the wrong way. While some things with Susanna got better, some didn't. A large part of the problem was just that I didn't have any standing instructions, which meant that at the end of almost every task I did for the restaurant I was left waiting. Once I was left alone in the kitchen for about twenty minutes with absolutely no clue where everyone else had gone, what I was supposed to be doing, and nothing to accomplish. So what could I do but stand there and wait? Not the best use of my time. But I was trying to be positive......oops. So I've learned more about my problems with authority, and how I bridle at it. It just aggravates me and I feel frustrated. I need to start accepting people in authority positions, listen better, and put my head down to work.

Additionally, slowing things down for me isn't good. I've begun to notice that even when I'm trying to work quickly, I'm not particularly fast. I would much rather get things done right, and my skills aren't up to the level they should be so that I can move quickly. I like to be precise, to get the cuts just square, to butcher the meats in such a way that I get the best possible cuts, but sometimes something just needs to get done, and I need to learn how to turn off the perfectionist switch so I can just do it.

The irony is that I actually enjoy tweaking and experimenting with things, and furthermore that I am horrible at doing anything with any sort of exactitude. I despise measuring. This makes me wonder in some ways what I'm a perfectionist at, and I think it might just be my knife cuts. Which, at the end of the day isn't too surprising to me. I've always known that I'm not the best baker because of how much I despise measuring, though I think I'm learning more about how to bake without measuring things, which is definitely making me think that I actually do like baking things. To the point where if I was producing interesting things I don't think I would mind working on pastry. I still prefer doing savory things, but I'm definitely becoming more interested in the other side. Speaking of which, if anyone has an idea on how to make something crunchy and very strongly olive oil flavored for a dessert, I tried the other day and failed miserably, and have yet to think of a new way to make this happen. I think it might require some heavy molecular gastronomy, but I'm not sure.....

Anyway I'm finding all this introspection to be quite tiring, and so I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is my last day of work, and then I'll be heading into the sunset! Yay!

Secret Ingredients

Some restaurants I've been to have secret ingredients which they put in almost everything to make it taste unified and delicious. One place in Boston keeps a container of pesto out on the counter, and every vegetable that gets sauteed on the hot line gets a dollop of pesto for some color and flavoring. It also adds a pretty flecked greenness and depth of flavor to everything.

I'll let you in on what our secret is at the restaurant here. We have these dried sweet peppers which we just call "pepperone" which is an ingredient from the south where Chef is from. They have a mild, kind of paprika-flavored sweetness to them, without the grassiness that you find in fresh peppers. When we do up all of our vegetables we always saute them up with a pepperone, our sauces as well get the pepper treatment. We deep-fry these things to use them as a garnish on dishes, and crumble up the deep fried ones to use as an ingredient in the egg portion of the veg platter. Pasta for staff meal is sometimes just made with a sauce of oil, garlic, and cooked pepperone. The only thing I'm surprised about is that we don't ever rehydrate them and make a paste to use as a sauce or rub on any of our meats. But if I were to look at the menu, I would guess that about 75% of it includes at least one dish with this random ingredient.

I can't believe I'm leaving in just one week! The time has been flying by, but I feel ready to head home, like I've gotten a lot out of my experience here. I'm going to be doing dinner with friends, celebrating my birthday somehow (maybe), packing up, going to a "graduation" ceremony at school, finishing my stage, and getting on a long flight to the states.....

What do I actually do from day to day?

So from the sounds of my complaining, whining, and moaning it probably sounds like I do nothing in the kitchen all day. However, I want to point out that this is anything but true. So for those of you who don't know much about what actually goes on in a real, live kitchen, I've put together a little list:


Broccoli rape (pronounced rah-pa, with a long 'a'): Every day the first thing I do when I get into the kitchen is prepare the broccoli rape for cooking. The way we do it is by peeling off all the outer leaves and stems, just leaving the tender core with a little floret of broccoli. I score the bottom of that stem with an x so it cooks all the way through, and then look through the leaves close to the core and also put the tender ones in the basket for cooking. The vegetable gets par-boiled and then sauteed with some oil, garlic, and pepperone (more on the pepperone in another post).

Garlic and parsley: Almost every single stage I have ever done involves garlic and parsley. Here, with the garlic, I usually peel about 2 or 3 heads of it daily. I learned a trick for this back at GZ, where you break off all the cloves and toss them in a tupperware. You then shake this tupperware for about three minutes like a maraca, and the garlic peels itself as it hits and rubs against the other garlic and the side of the tupperware. This works best when you have a lot of garlic that you need to peel, as with small amounts there isn't enough friction to make it work. But when done right, you open up the box and can just pluck out whole, peeled cloves of garlic for use. Chef gets a kick out of watching me shake the box, and I'm not sure if she likes it or thinks that I look like an idiot, but it is definitely a lot easier, not to mention the fact that this way you get less of that sticky garlic oil on your hands! As for the parsley, it is really straightforward. It reminds me of being in Trotter's kitchen, where the first thing I did, every day, for about an hour, was deal with parsley. You pick all the leaves off each stem, then you chop and chop and chop until the parsley is a soggy mess of finely chopped leaves. The other thing we do here is deep fry some parsley for a garnish. For that I need whole, perfect leaves, which pop like mad as the water evaporates from them in the fryer, and it leaves you with a nice, green, crunchy garnish that we use on several dishes. I actually like it a lot, though I dislike the way in which it gets the fryer a little dirty as you can never get all the parsley out that you put in.

Mussels: We get mussels in with the beards still attached, so I need to yank those off, cook the bivalves with some oil and garlic, and then, since we use them out of their shells, I pull each individual piece of meat out of the shell and check the inside of the muscle to make sure that the entire beard has been removed. There's something very disconcerting about dealing with the flesh of these things...

Blending things, whipping things: We do a lot of puree soups, and after staff meal I am often the one who blends them to a creamy smoothness in the food processor and seasons them. Also we do most of our small-batch whipped things by hand, which means I'm often recruited as a human kitchen-aid to make whipped cream or get egg whites to beautiful, soft peaks.

Cleaning: Cleaning is of course a central part to any kitchen, this one included. Furthermore I've discovered that I can start cleaning while they are putting out the last few plates, and this means we all get to go home earlier. Plus, usually by the end of service there isn't much for me to do, and so it's nice to have my hands busy.

That's day-to-day kitchen life for ya'....not the most exciting, but it can still be satisfying and I always have the opportunity to watch even when my hands are busy with something mundane.

By the way, it turns out we did not close the kitchen last night, and we actually had about a dozen guests! However we didn't do any prep during the day, and instead cleaned, which I was actually very happy to do....there was some nastiness that I found that made me appreciate how I used to clean like that every week at Green Zebra!

What it means to work in a small restaurant

The restaurant here is tiny. I don't mean space-wise; each table is well spaced out so you don't need to hear others' conversations while eating, but I think we can't seat more than about seventy total without some major cramping going on. Add that to the fact that since the Italian dinner time is very short, we only do one seating, maybe turning over a table or two to someone who is willing to eat really late (after 10 PM). This means that at our busiest we can only do at the absolute maximum 80, and it seems that right now, during the off season, we haven't been getting more than about 50 in on our busiest nights. And we haven't had very many busy nights. Friday last week was the party, Friday this week we saw thirty-some people. Saturday of both weeks has been really busy, and while last Sunday was slow, this one was also mid-paced.
Those are our busy nights. Our slow nights.....well, if this were the States, I would say that it is time for a change in the business model. We had a four-top on Thursday. One four-top. That means only one table of four people. Working that night, we had two cooks, one chef, one stage (me), a hostess, a waitress, and a dishwasher: seven people. That night in the kitchen I organized our folder of dessert recipes.

Furthermore, a small restaurant means a small kitchen--two people actually cooking with the chef stepping in only on the occasions when things get hairy. That means that by adding me into the kitchen I'm almost a 50% increase in labor force. But the space around the stoves is very cramped, and we only put out one cold appetizer, which chef does. That means that all there is for me to do once service starts is desserts, and maybe, at best, one out of every two or three tables orders desserts. So once service starts, besides the sweets I can pretty much help put the garnishes on dishes and that's about it. There just isn't enough to do otherwise!

I would love it if Keiji taught me how to run his station and then on a slow night chef said "take the evening off, Jenny will run your station". When you only have 10 people to serve, it really isn't much of a challenge for me to run a station, and everyone else in the kitchen would be there to catch any mistakes I might make. But I am positive that won't happen, which means I am left standing around once the first guests come in the door.

But the small size also means that people have a better feeling for what is going on in the kitchen overall. Keiji and Susanna are always aware of what the other is doing, and they don't even label their mise because they each know the menu so well that they can identify everything on sight (I still wish they labeled dates, but you can't win them all...). Such a small kitchen means things are coming out more consistently because it is always the same person doing everything, and the low number of people they serve means more opportunity to do things right. Generally speaking I like a kitchen just a little bit bigger, but I definitely see the advantages to having such a streamlined system!

(note: this was written earlier in the week. Last night was another 1-table night, and apparently tonight since we did enough prep yesterday for both days, we're doing a deep clean of the kitchen instead, possibly closing down entirely.)

(also, an update on knives, since that post was old as well: I pulled out their stone last night, and discovered that with a lot of elbow grease you can still get the knives sharpened on that stone, but it probably took me forty five minutes of work to get a useable edge on two knives. Now I should also admit that I am not an expert at sharpening knives, so maybe some part of that is me too....)

Knives

Anyone who has talked to me for ten minutes about cooking knows how I love knives. I like working with them, I like taking care of them, I like the objects themselves. I have a t-shirt with a large chef’s knife on it (pictured). If you have talked to me for twenty minutes about cooking, you probably know how much I hate dull knives, how they make me sad, how I would rather rip things apart with my teeth than use a dull knife (okay, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic...). If you’ve talked to me for even longer, I have probably shown you the scar on my index finger from when I cut myself because I was using a dull knife and ended up going to the ER to have it stitched up (I finished making dinner first, one-handed, with the bleeding finger held up on top of my head to reduce blood flow. Butternut squash soup, roast chicken I think. Anyway, there wasn’t anyone home to drive me over, so I needed to wait, and what was I going to do, let the soup burn?)

Anthony Bourdain, in Kitchen Confidential, wrote that there are two things which belong to other people which you never touch when in a kitchen. One is a body part, and the other is a knife. Essentially, according to him, its okay for you to pilfer through someone’s wallet, as long as you don’t touch their knives.

In the US, at least in fine dining, each cook has their own knives for work. You buy them yourself, you take care of them, you love them, you use them, and when you leave, you take your knives with you. They are your instruments; just like a member of an orchestra will bring their own instrument to rehearsal, cooks bring their knives. And its actually a very apt analogy: knives vary slightly from maker to maker, in shape, weight, size, handle, etc; finding the right knife for you is in many ways like a violinist finding the right instrument for him, with the sound he likes, the response rates, the size, etc. For every stage I’ve done in the US, I’ve brought a chefs knife and a paring knife (which lives in my pocket in a little mini-case).

I asked on my first day when I was changing if I should bring my knives down too. Susanna said that unless I really wanted to, there were knives to be used downstairs. I figured that I would give their knives a try and see how their system works.

It was horrible! The objects with which they cut things hardly have edges, and should probably be called really thin hammers rather than knives. There was only one good knife in the drawer (they store all their knives in a drawer, on top of each other. This means every time you move one knife, you dull every other one in there as it bumps against everything) and I was chopping parsley, which needs a good knife, unless you’re making parsley pesto. So I grabbed this knife and started using it, thanking the kitchen gods that they had at least provided me with one useable instrument.

Five minutes later chef walked in. She set up her station, and then asked “Where’s my knife?” Oops. I rinsed it off and handed it over with chagrin. Apparently she doesn’t mind other people using that knife, as long as she isn’t in need of it herself. She finished her project and handed it back to me. Talk about culture shock!

I think it was day three where I had had enough of these knives. I started to notice that I was altering my chopping technique to use more force so that I could actually work my way through work, and that was scaring me. More force means that if you miss, there’s more likeliness of a trip to the ER. That’s why dull knives are dangerous.

So day three I asked if they had a sharpening stone. Chef laughed. “You like using the stone? What’s wrong with a steel?” Keiji nodded in approval that I would prefer a stone--that’s how the Japanese always do it, and probably part of the whole cultural thing which makes Japanese knives so awesome. They showed me where the stones were hidden, and I pulled them out to start working.

I picked the two main knives that we use in the kitchen for just about everything and started to sharpen them. Or at least try. These are the same knives that I got in my kit for culinary school, and while they are amazing value, the blades are thick and the metal is hard. This means that when sharpening them, especially since they had no edge left to speak of, you need a really rough stone to actually remove scraps of metal from the knife so that you can even create an edge to sharpen. These stones were both super fine. I would love to use them on my knife, but mine is thin and I am very careful to always maintain a good edge on it. Its the same with sandpaper: you can’t smooth down a rough edge on wood with super fine paper, you first use a rough paper to smooth things a little, and then progress to finer and finer grains until you have the polish you want.

Did I improve the knives? Marginally. Was it worth the work? Yes, because I will take every improvement I can manage. Did it do that much? No, not really.

At this point I’m sort of in a catch-22. I can bring my stone in, which is rougher, and have another go at sharpening these things. The question is, will I cause a fuss somehow by bringing in my own stone, saying that theirs aren’t good enough? Or, I can just keep using all their equipment, and be very careful with my fingers. The one thing I can’t do is bring my own knife in. I have two knives out here, but one is identical to all of theirs, meaning that I might not come home with it, and I can’t risk damaging my good knife by bringing it in. Anyone who treats knives that poorly shouldn’t come near my knife, which actually requires care and upkeep. Its the kind of knife which can’t be thrown in a drawer, needs regular washing, and shouldn’t be used for hacking. I’m not totally confident that I could communicate that well enough, and if I can’t get them to treat my knife with the love that I have for it, then they aren’t going to see it.

One more thing that proves how much I love knives? This post.
For more info on knives, you can read an excerpt from An Edge in the Kitchen on egullet.org.
Also, if you have ever been interested in early 20th century pig-butchering, check out this interactive flash program which was made from an old book.

Vegetable Platter Saga part II

So I had what I thought was a wonderful plan to change the vegetarian platter into something real. I would wait in ambush for when a veg platter got ordered, and then after the complaints that Chef would inevitably express, I would shake my head and say "I agree! Why don't we just have a normal dish for the veg platter that could be so much easier to do?". In my head the conversation turned into her agreeing with me and saying that since my hands were often sitting around the kitchen doing nothing, I could instead make a new veg dish next week and we would discuss what it should be as we plated the stupid platter, and at the end we would all go walking off holding hands, singing kumbaya, and rainbows would emerge from behind every cloud.

Well I did lay in wait for a veg platter to be ordered. Of course, unless you're a hungry vegetarian you don't order it, as a full meal can be made from a soup and a pasta, of which we have all sorts of options. And during the week people usually don't go for a huge, five-course meal. There aren't that many Italian vegetarians anyway. So it took about three or four days of lying in ambush for one to pop out of our ticket printer. But when it did, I was ready. I had rehearsed my lines and I delivered them with such grace that chef couldn't take any offense at what was, at the end of the day, a criticism of her menu. 

She smiled, and agreed. It would be easier to have a vegetarian main course. I said "so why don't you change it?" and she laughed. She then talked about how she has a friend who opened up a vegetarian place and did this awesome eggplant dish with cheese and indian spices and how she thought it was fabulous. And I suggested we do our own version of that. And she smiled at the memory of that dish. And then we plated. And nothing else was said about the vegetarian issue. Yeah, anticlimactic, without a hint of a rainbow peeking out from a cloud or fridge.

Well I don't give up easily, and that wasn't a no, so I lay in ambush for another opportunity, which arrived on Saturday night with us getting in four veg platter orders almost all at once. As the two of us were scrambling to get them together, I complained a little, and said that it would be so much easier if we just had a real vegetarian dish. I again got the smile, laugh, and "I agree." But it seems that despite all this nothing is going to happen. I've noticed first-hand how stubborn and adverse to change the Italians are, and I guess that this is just my witnessing it first-hand.

I have a feeling that my goal will not be achieved, as I'm not quite sure what else to do beyond asking straight up if I can make a different dish, and I think that would be interpreted as rude and is probably just a bad idea. Which means I'm at a standstill for at least a little while. If anyone has any ideas on what I can do to keep moving on this quest, let me know!

Dried tomatoes

This recipe comes from my host mom, who just pulled out a jar of these last night at dinner, and they're addictively good. They make your mind think there's a bit of heat to them, but the flavor is just sweet and acidic, and I can imagine them making a wonderful topping for a steak or burger, though we ate them just simply on bread, which was also fabulous. However, as with all things which are kept at room temperature for long periods of time, make sure that you use a clean jar, that you really do cover the tomatoes up all the way with oil, and that if you have any floating tomatoes you put something on top of them to make them sink down and to make sure they are actually covered.

2 lbs dried tomatoes
1 cup (large) of vinegar (red wine would probably work best, but anything which isn't balsamic works)
A bit of water

Cook the tomatoes in this water/vinegar mixture for about twenty minutes. Leave covered on the stove for 20 minutes to plump and steep. Strain the tomatoes out and dry them somewhat with a towel. Chop about 5 cloves of garlic and a big fistful of parsley. Slice tomatoes to a smaller size, mix these things together with some capers. Place in a clean jar and cover with olive oil. Put the lid on and leave sitting at room temperature for a month before enjoying these in any way possible. After opening again you can still leave them at room temperature.

Leadership style

One thing I’m getting the chance to learn a lot about in this stage is leadership style. It makes sense, since I’m ranked a half step below the dishwasher in this kitchen, which means I spend a lot of time being led, being told what to do and how to do it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been the best at dealing with authority, in which case I’m possibly reacting to more than is actually going on. But nonetheless I’ve found Susanna’s conduct with me to be grating on more than one occasion, and trying to figure out why has been a learning experience  in and of itself.

Part of it is just the way in which she delivers instruction. I was once at a stage in Chicago where I was asked to cut asparagus on a bias. I started doing that, and after a few one of the chefs came over and explained that I was doing it wrong, but that I had gotten through so much that I should just keep going because it wasn’t a huge deal. He then went over to the cook who had assigned me the task and started scolding him, to explain that he should have checked on my work right away to make sure I had understood the instructions correctly, and that a stage should always be given full direction the first time she does anything because its new and she can’t be expected to know exactly what you want every time.

Compare this to Susanna, who the other day asked me to chop a large fish into smaller parts for broth. I did it, asked her if she needed anything else, and then went on to another project. As she was pulling the fish head out of the broth when it was finished, she called me over. “You didn’t remove the insides of the gills when you were prepping the fish.” Well how am I supposed to know that? I haven’t prepped stock with large fish before, and even if I had, the likelihood that I would have learned a different technique is quite high. So why was I getting scolded for this?

What she should have said could have gone more like this. “Jenny, forgot to tell you this when you were prepping, but for next time, make sure to remove the gills because they have some blood in them and can cloud the stock.” I had to ask her for an explanation of why it mattered if the gills were left in or not. And she shouldn’t have criticized my work, as I did exactly what she asked of me--it was her problem that she didn’t explain fully in the first place or check my work. And it is really, really grating to be talked at in this manner.

She doesn’t often give me good explanations of why we do things the way we do. Another story: we have a cured fish that we do in the restaurant, and part of the cure includes a lot of grated ginger. The first time I grated the ginger I didn’t wear gloves, which left my hand feeling like it was burning slightly for the next few hours. Not pleasant. Furthermore, the size grater she had me working with ended up getting clogged with ginger threads, which meant that I also ended up cleaning these threads out with a toothpick so that the grater could get used again, since it wouldn’t come out in the dishwasher.

The next time she asked me to do it, I asked why we don’t just put the ginger in the blender, since the grater essentially juices the pulp anyway, and this would not only be easier but faster and would mean that nobody had to waste time cleaning out the grater either. The answer I got was “It can’t do it.” Or something like that. Now maybe it was my language skills getting in the way, or something about how she speaks so softly that I often can’t hear her over all the other noise in the kitchen, but her explanation didn’t make sense to me. Is our blender not strong enough to break down the fibers? Did the ginger need some blood, sweat, and tears to taste better? I really wasn’t following, but apparently the whys of the kitchen aren’t really important for me. Except that I’m there to learn, not to just do her unpleasant work, and so the whys matter the most. So leadership lesson: always give a why with the instruction.

Something really annoyed me yesterday though. For one of our dishes, we boil chestnuts and then remove the pulp from the shells for a way of adding body to our squash soup. Susanna really dislikes removing the pulp, as it is messy and kind of feels unpleasant. Yesterday she asked for my help with it, and then after I had gotten started she walked off. For a few minutes she did something else, but then as I was standing there, doing her grunt work, I noticed that she had started stirring a sauce with a lot of attention. A sauce that usually doesn’t need any attention. She was trying to look busy so she didn’t need to do this unpleasant task. Then she stood around for a few minutes. As I did her work. So I started playing a game. I stopped working and had some water, standing around, for every minute that she wasn’t working. I am not in that kitchen to do her work. I am there to help, to make it so that things can be done better, or so that more things can get done. I refuse to just do something for her so she can avoid doing something she dislikes. It isn’t like it’s my favorite task either. While the other things she has done were somewhat grating, this actually felt disrespectful. Make use of me, don’t abuse me.

So I guess this needed to get off my chest, and while I wish I were learning things in a way that didn’t just illustrate what not to do, I’m still learning. And that’s what I’m here to do, no matter what. Plus, its good training for me to get used to holding my tongue a little better.

Also, look! I did make the veg dish with fennel, chickpeas, and radicchio. I topped it with some fresh fennel fronds and some shavings of parmesan. It wasn't the kind of dish that people would come back to the restaurant for over and over again, but it is still respectable, and I imagine with some professional kitchen dressing up it could get that lift it needs into the realm of awesomeness.

Stay Positive!

So perhaps I’ve been focusing overmuch on the negative aspects of my job. Its understandable, as those are the differences which are much more clear to me as it is easier to tell what doesn’t work than figure out why things do work. But even so there are some great things going on at work, and so partially as a positive thinking exercise (I’ve been going in with a bit of a negative attitude) and partially to just display the restaurant in as fair a light as possible, here are some things that are great about the restaurant.

They are willing to let me do any type of prep:
In my experience in the US, stages and low-level cooks prep almost entirely vegetables, sometimes helping out with meat, but only after it has been cut--seasoning, stuffing, etc. Here they are willing to let me try out anything myself, and so I’ve been breaking down piccione (squab) pretty often, and doing all the prep for it until it gets sent over to the stove for braising. They regularly break down a side of lamb during prep, and I want to do that one of these days, which I think will be possible, provided I ask.

Some really neat products:
On the subject of this lamb, the quality! According to Wikipedia, New Zealand lamb (and I think the US uses mostly that) has to be under 1 year old. The meat is definitely red, and the flavor has that distinct flavor that we associate with lamb. I think that the lamb we get here must be a few months younger than a year, because the meat is a very light pink, the flavor is extremely mild, and it is so much smaller. A lamb chop is about the same size as a silver dollar, and the rib bone which the chop attaches to is thinner than a pencil. While it is definitely a delicious product, I do miss that lamb flavor that you get with the older animals, but just like with suckling pig or any other very young meat, there is something exquisite about this.

The pigeons as well come a little differently than in the US. All that has been done to them is they’ve been plucked, and not well. So when prepping them it feels a lot more real, reminds you of exactly what you’re prepping. First I have to cut off their heads, claws, and wing tips, then burn away any feathers that might have been missed in the original plucking, then I cut off the tuchus of each bird so that I have access to the inner cavity of it. Next is the removal of all the giblets, and only at this point do I have a bird in my hands which resembles what you find for purchase in a US supermarket. It can get messy, but it is really gratifying. After all this, we finally break the birds down, removing the wings, separating the legs from the body, and filleting the breasts. The wings get stewed, the breasts get seared off, and the thighs get deboned and stuffed instead with a mixture of livers and hearts so that you have a little lollipop of meat on every drumstick.

Which brings me to another thing I like, which is that they have no fear of making a dish that takes up more time than any other. I think the pigeon is the most time-consuming dish to prepare (or maybe tied with the lamb), and that’s absolutely fine with everyone. I just above described all the work that goes into breaking down the birds--that takes me about an hour to do for eight birds, though I imagine I’ll get faster at it as I get more practice in--and then we cook them. The stew is what takes a long time, as we sear off the drumsticks and wings, then remove them from the cooking oil, drain that off, put the meat back in, do a wine reduction, add some broth, braise them until really tender, and then add a half-dozen different ingredients in. Its very different from some of our other braises, which are really just sear and stew kinds of processes.

I like how we make all of our breads in-house. (this picture is actually from an outing we had for class, not from the restaurant. But doesn't it look yummy?)

I like how much the waiters love my American plating styles for the desserts.

I like how I’m starting to get to know the kitchen such that I can just see what is out on the counter and know what needs to be prepped by me.

I like how when I suggest an idea on a dish people listen to me and take my opinion seriously, even if they don’t ever follow it. Usually it has to do with salt levels. I like things slightly less salty than they do.

I like how Keiji will correct me. Instead of saying that I’m not doing something right, he’ll come over and say: “Leave more skin on the breast, its the most important part for searing, and you’re cutting off too much there.” Whenever he corrects me I feel like I learned something and I get a better understanding of a dish.

I like having a coffee at the beginning of every shift and a glass of wine at the end. I really like that to be honest. And the wines are usually great. It has been a great way for me to learn more about Tuscan wines, because I think we drink almost all Chianti wines, and comparing them to one another has helped me understand quite a lot more about the genre.

It can be hard in a restaurant setting to get overwhelmed by the negatives and the little things which are done every day, and in exchange lose the big picture. I think it requires conscious effort to maintain a positive outlook and not get bogged down with chopping parsley, but if you lose that big picture then the work becomes less valuable and you start to wonder what you’re doing there. Even with this short a time I’ve had those moments, and I just need to keep reminding myself why I’m there and thinking about all the great things I’m exposing myself to.

Ideas for the Veg dish

I apologize for the funny formatting, I'm not on my own computer and that makes it harder.....
Stuffed eggplant:

could stuff it with the insides of the eggplant, breadcrumbs, egg, herbs, tomato or roasted tomato, cheese. Gets served kind of like a little boat, garnished with toasted pine nuts and some kind of sauce (I would like a mild garlic sauce, but I’m guessing that won’t fly. Tomato sauce probably would, and this is the one that reminds me the most of eggplant parm in the first place.)



Variation on stuffed eggplant:

We could up the ante a little by flavoring it with ginger and cardamom instead of garlic, parsley, and rosemary. I don’t think this one will happen.



Braised veggie:

Something like a braised fennel or leek could provide the kind of “central item” that this dish needs. There could be a whole variety of ways to serve this....



-braised fennel, roasted eggplant, potato puree, pine nuts, mint

-braised leek, sauteed mushrooms, herbed polenta, mushroom sauce, walnuts, rosemary

-braised fennel, sauteed radicchio, chickpeas, sauce(?)

-braised leeks, eggplant puree, chickpeas, parmesan, fresh cherry tomato



These dishes strike me as pretty generic, they rely completely on very common Italian ingredients, and the techniques are not fancy. I feel like we could step further out of the box with this dish, but its probably better to play it safe and just do something easy and good. I don’t think anyone wants to add more work to their prep time, so anything that takes much longer to make than an eggplant parmesan is probably out. One thing I like about all these dishes is that they are wintery and have a little more substance to them. I’m leaning towards the radicchio one just because it seems to have the best balance of flavors (braised fennel and leeks both are really sweet dishes to me), and so I’m going to try making it for lunch tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it turns out, and if it goes well I might take that to the chef as a proposal....

Setting myself a goal

I have decided to set myself a goal for the rest of my time doing this stage.

Here is the problem: our vegetarian entree sucks. It isn't just "not our best dish". Its not disgusting, but it also isn't a dish and isn't anywhere near the same level of execution for the rest of our food. It's really a platter. I know one thing vegetarians hate a lot, and that's the veg entree which is simply a collection of sides. Here is what we put on our veg platter right now:

-A slice of eggplant parmesan
-Sliced roasted peppers (the veg side for the lamb dish)
-Sauteed artichokes (the veg half of our squid and artichoke dish)
-Sauteed chicory (the veg garnish for our fava soup with chicory)
-A breaded and deep fried mini mozzarella sandwich (yes, we flour, egg, and breadcrumb bread)
-Sauteed broccoli rabe (veg side of another dish, cooked in the same way as the chicory)
-A beaten egg mixed with some crunchy dried sweet pepper and cooked in the oven as a kind of souffle-thing
-Sauteed swiss chard (again, cooked in the same way as the other two green things, and also a side)

We heat all the veggies up in the microwave when an order comes in. Yum!

Saturday night we had an abnormally large number of these ordered. This is one dish that isn't made on the line, which means that chef is the one to assemble everything. Saturday, since I was there she delegated everything but the side veggies to me (parmesan, egg, and sandwich), and then complained to the front of house that they need to sell fewer of these because it takes a lot of time split between two people to assemble this dish. All the components do mean that it takes a lot of time to assemble one order, but I don't understand why we have the dish on the menu at all. Our most complex entree has five parts, and yet here we are with eight, to the point that they can't even all fit cleanly on our biggest platter. Furthermore, it doesn't even make any sense. There is no focal point of the dish, though on the menu it always lists "eggplant parm with other seasonal veggies", so maybe the eggplant parm should be featured, but it is just presented as one item in this smorgasbord.

Last night I tested the waters. Just with us cooks, not chef. We were discussing prep for Tuesday, and I mentioned that we needed more eggplant parm. I then also said, "you know, I'm not fond of our veg dish." They asked why, and I explained how its a platter, a collection of sides, not a proper entree. Keiji looked at me and said that with just vegetables, what could we expect to do? I replied that there are vegetarian entrees out there that we could do, and that was the end of the conversation. However neither of them stood up to defend the dish, and I think they may have just been confused as to why I cared.

Hence my goal: Get the restaurant to start serving a proper veggie entree. I think that while it is ambitious (a stage convincing the restaurant to change a dish), I think it might be doable. The chef dislikes putting together what they currently have, it isn't the favorite of the owner or chef's mother or anything sentimental, and I don't think anyone is proud of it or anything. However my work background gives me at least a little bit of authority on the matter of vegetarian dishes, and so I'm going to leverage that all I can.

But if I say that we should change it, I think then that I need to have a good alternative to propose. So I'm going to try playing with ideas and developing something this week that I can bring in as an alternative. I'm going to stay conservative though, and probably try to keep on the theme of eggplant parmesan, but by elevating it in some way such that it actually fits the context of a fine dining restaurant and can hold its own as an entree. I'll keep you updated on my progress!

(photo credit:  martina0315.blog.deejay.it. Not actually our eggplant parm.)

Who I work with

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I definitely missed it a little here, but instead I went to Mac Dario's (scroll all the way down for menu) instead and had a feast of some of the finest meat you can find in Tuscany (if not all of Italy) in the lovely company of Josh, and I was happy (and so, so stuffed!).

In other thanksgiving news, if you want to know why it might be fun to be a food scientist, read this post which entertainingly details part of the scientific method of how to cook a great turkey and along the way discusses flamethrowers and dragons. That blog in general is terrific, but this post was just fabulous.

So I started work last week, and I thought it would be good to introduce you to the cast of characters. Running the kitchen is Giovanna, who requests that she be called "la cuoca" (the cook) rather than "la chef", and while I think this is somehow related to hubris and her desire to not be obnoxious, I'm going to ignore it here and refer to her usually just as chef. Life is simpler that way.

She really runs the kitchen like the matron of a family. At this point all of the daily work has been delegated to her two cooks, and she just oversees things and puts her nose in where she feels like it. Generally speaking she is extremely jovial, and you can tell she enjoys the work. She personally prepares staff lunch almost every day, but that's about the only thing she always does. Usually during prep time she will come in at a certain hour and start standing by the stoves. There's a little workspace there where she will slice things for sauces, and she takes complete control over all sources of heat for a portion of the day. It actually is nice because the prep area is not near the stoves, and so if you put something on and need to check it constantly, she will do it so you don't need to constantly be interrupting your work to run over there and see how things are going.

I guess its the way she approaches staff meal that makes me think of her more like the mother cook in the kitchen than anything else. She always cares about it, and if I stay working for an extra minute or two to finish a project before going to eat, she scolds me and tells me to stop and get some food. As well, she has an opinion about everything. In the first week she has delivered lectures on why black truffles aren't really good, the differences between various kinds of prosciutto (gray and red, I think), why chefs in American restaurants don't work in the kitchens anymore (hours are too ridiculous), why you shouldn't do pasta for an entree when serving lots and lots of people at once (though we did it), and I'm sure you get the picture.

Furthermore, she's a short, very large woman, who always wears this kind of work dress that is probably actually a maid's outfit. It is short sleeved, khaki colored, and stops just below the knees. She always wears hose and a pair of black mary-janes.

Susanna is from somewhere in South America originally (I couldn't get her to tell me where exactly), and has been working at the restaurant for about three years. For all intents and purposes she's the sous chef, and as such she always knows what's going on. She likes to ask me lots of questions when we're working (what are you doing for christmas? where is the rest of your family? do you like x?) and got very interested in the fact that I was Jewish a while ago (so you guys believe in the trinity but not christ, right? umm.....that doesn't even make sense) and I got questions all day long on what that's like. She was especially curious about what I do on christmas day if I'm Jewish (Japanese food).

Her workstyle doesn't remind me much of the cooks at home. She has intensity but for some reason lacks that kind of smooth confidence I associate with someone who has been doing their job for a long time and thinks they know it well. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to be in more of a leadership position, but something about it strikes me as a little strange. It's probably just me. She too is really short, which means that in my clogs (2 in platform) I actually tower over these women. Its a really strange sensation for me.

Keiji is the other person who works in the kitchen, though his Japanese accent is so thick and he talks so quietly that I often have trouble understanding him, which means we don't talk too much. But he's a really nice guy, and always smiles. He works hard, well, and has a good attention for detail which Susanna sometimes misses. It's probably for that reason that he's in charge of the pastry menu and doing our breads, and I think he does a great job at things.

So that's our kitchen! Small but kind, fun and relaxed. A very different experience than what I've had in the US, but I'm enjoying myself tons, and my Italian is improving so much!

A party

Friday night we were supposed to be doing a private event for a group of 80. I got in Friday afternoon as the chef (she doesn’t like to be called chef, but its just easier terminology) was trying to figure out how to make our food stretch because apparently it was instead going to be 100. People complain that Top Chef throws those guys into situations that would never happen in real life--except that they do.

The main issue was that we only had made 85 portions of the bavarese (halfway between a pudding and a panna cotta) that we were serving for dessert--the rest we could just do slightly smaller portions and make it alright. Luckily our regular menu serves a bavarese but in a different flavor; our plan was to just slip some of these in and sauce them up the same as all the others in the hope that nobody would notice the inconsistency. We didn’t have any more mandarins with which to make new pudding anyway, and they were all set in individual cups.

I started my day by prepping a squash that was long and thin, like butternut. When I say long, I mean it--I needed two cutting boards for this thing because it was about the length of my leg. So perhaps “prep” is also not quite the right word. Because of the size, maybe “butcher” would be a better term. Not to mention the fact that the squash was very hard and the knives in the kitchen all a little dull. At one point chef mentioned that my grunts of effort made it sound somewhat like I was participating in a wrestling match (or at least I think that’s what she meant....). It took about an hour and a half to get all the squash peeled, diced, and in the oven. At this point I could hardly grip a knife anymore and had lost all upper body strength.

Starter: Puree of roasted squash soup with black kale

The soup is super simple, with the ingredients being just squash, a bit of potato, oil, butter, almost caramelized onions, broth, salt, and pepper. It has a nice smooth texture even though we don’t pass it through a fine strainer, and the color is that bright orangey-yellow that makes squash soups so wonderfully delicious. The black kale (cavolo nero) we just boiled off quickly and sauteed in a pan. Turns out that at the restaurant they don’t overcook their greens (much).

Primo: Tortelli filled with broccoli and served with a sweet paprika sauce

Tortelli are big tortelloni; they are about the size of a golf ball. These we filled with a broccoli and ricotta puree which I was not a huge fan of. The broccoli was very overpowering and still had the little bits of florets intact, which meant that the filling had a kind of rough texture. We make fresh pasta at the restaurant, but the rough filling sort of hid the nice texture of the dough. The paprika sauce is very neat, a definite improvement on a red pepper coulis, with the sauce being much stronger and richer while missing that taste of bell pepper which I dislike anyway. I still haven’t learned how we do the sauce, but I will for sure.

Secondo: Roulade of chicken stuffed with prosciutto and fig with potato-swiss chard puree

Myself and the sous, Susanna were cutting the chickens while Keiji was doing the stuffing and rolling of the birds. About halfway through the chef walked over and asked Keiji where the prosciutto was. “Prosciutto?” was essentially his answer.

Hence ensued a discussion of how it is hard to stuff something with prosciutto and dried figs when you don’t have the prosciutto, and from here we began a discussion of how to get prosciutto into the dish. We immediately decided we didn’t have time to re-roll and -stuff the birds already done, and we had to be consistent, so the first thing was that we continue on. We then thought of various plans, from cooking the birds with prosciutto on top (no, because then the string would be under the prosciutto), cooking the birds, untying them, and adding prosciutto on top when we went to reheat them (no, we’d lose the crispy skin of the birds and the prosciutto would get tough in the oven, or would fall off when cutting), pushing little pieces of prosciutto into each slice after cutting (no, that’s stupid), or sauteeing up cubed prosciutto and just drizzling it on top as a garnish and pretending that the menu was wrong, not us (that’s what we did). The skin on these birds was deliciously crispy.

Dessert: Bavarese of mandarin orange with Strega sauce.

Strega is some kind of Italian liqueur. I can’t figure out what’s in it, but it makes me think of what mint would be like if it were a spice instead of an herb. Good news was we ended up having enough bavarese because after being told 100 were coming, only 70 showed. This is probably in large part because while they originally were coming at eight or eight thirty, we got a call at half past seven that they wouldn’t arrive until just after nine. At eight thirty we were told just before ten. And they did show up just before ten, but my guess is some of the conventioneers decided it was too late and they were tired and so they went home. This solved some of our problems, but made it a very late night. However, I really enjoyed it and was glad to have so much to do all evening (or at least until 8, when our prep was all ready and we were set up to go with no guests. During this down time, the owner opened up a bottle of prosecco for us, we did an oil tasting, and we discussed why it is that American cooks work so much harder than Italian cooks, but whether or not there was an ensuing difference in quality of cuisine. The jury is still out.)

Coming soon!

Took a little hiatus, but I just started work and am going to be posting all about it soon, so check back in a day or two!!

The land of overcooked green things

The other day in class Patricia was cooking green beans for a dish. She brought one over to me. "Is this done?" I tasted it, and it was just at that spot I love: a little crunchy, but no more raw taste to it. Bright green, it tasted like summer and I helped her pull them out and shock them in an ice bath.

About five minutes later Chef started asking who had done the green beans. I presumed he wanted to praise that person for her excellent timing in making sure that they were cooked to perfection. Apparently not.

"These are still raw! Where's the cooking water so we can put them back in?" Patricia defended our decision by explaining that the green beans were going to get re-heated and thus cooked more when we added them in to the next step. Chef looked at her strangely and told her to cook them for at least another four or five minutes. She smiled, "better undercooked than overcooked, right?"

Well I have come to the realization that in Italy that isn't true, because I have seen so many green things be abused and overcooked until all nutrition, flavor, and color has been leeched out of them. I have admired the Italians' respect for products in every department except the one of things which are green.

I've seen the chefs at school do it over and over, and my host mom does it every time she cooks anything leafy. Now, there is a Tuscan dish called "rebollita", which means "re-boiled", where you take a soup of spinach, kale, chard, celery and some other flavors, eat the soup with bread, soak the bread in the soup overnight as a thickener, and re-heat it the next day as a kind of stew you eat with a fork. I understand that when you reheat those things they will get overcooked, but that's the point in this case. However I don't understand the point of overcooking them on round 1 as well! I've started to term it an official philosophy of Italian cooking. Whenever I see something overcooked (for example we overcooked otoro tuna the other day--so painful to watch!!) I just remind myself of the Green things philosophy. Which doesn't make the slaughter any less painful, but at least lets me categorize it as a cultural difference.

I guess the main point of this post is that cultural relativism is not always a good thing--sometimes they're just wrong!!

In other news, now that I've now learned how to embed videos, I'm going to have fun with its awesomeness for a bit. Check out my sister and her show!

On Learning (and a sidenote on lobsters)

First off, how wonderful is this?



So I guess just like Tony, I’m in a soapbox kind of mood.....

I went to visit Alle Murate yesterday, mostly because I had no clue when I would be starting, what my hours would be, or anything of the sort. Turns out their hours are easy and relaxed; I’ll be working from 4 PM on. I then assumed that it would mean I’d get off work around 2 AM, but they laughed at me: “Most nights you’ll be off at midnight, on occasion around 1.” A kitchen with an eight hour workday? I still haven’t totally wrapped my head around this concept. Though I suppose in exchange I’ll be working six days a week.

I also apologized for my stilted Italian where I don’t understand a ton of things. They laughed at this too. “You’ll be fine. You should have seen the last one.”

The chef herself seemed so relaxed. As you can see from this little vignette, she laughs, she smiles, she’s cheerful in general, and she didn’t seem particularly rushed, despite the fact that I had stopped in on a Saturday (not the best time to ever go into a restaurant if you aren’t a guest, but it was what worked for me). At the end of our conversation she excused herself and took her time reentering the kitchen. This was very strange for me. The executive chef in my head of one of the best restaurants in the city on a Saturday night is not a cheerful, bubbly person. I have a stereotype in my head of someone who is busy, working hard, strict, and not to be trifled with. Generally speaking I think I see chefs as hard-core, tough guys. And it could be that she didn’t want to scare me off before I had even started working. But reflecting on it I don’t think that was the case. I think that she actually is that relaxed and cheerful. When something isn’t going right, maybe then she turns on the heat (no pun intended), but it appears that for the most part she defies the stereotype entirely.

I’ve had a lot of time during class these past few weeks to observe the personalities of everyone in the class, and I’ve been using this as an opportunity to self-reflect about my own behavior (this is so atypical of me--I must really not be doing enough!). For manners and  anonymity’s sake, I’ve flipped around genders on occasion, am splitting up different parts of everyone’s personalities, and it probably won’t matter and you probably don’t care. But I’m doing it anyway. One thing I’m not sure about is why I’m doing this, but I am anyway.

School is of course a place to learn. However, in an environment like culinary school whether or not you’ve learned certain material exhibits itself in a very different manner, as at the end of the lesson there’s a final product which illustrates the skills trying to be honed. Furthermore, you can’t really do that much “studying” at home--what you do in class is your main chance to expose yourself to the material and learn it.

One guy in the class came in with some experience, and as a native Italian he’s obviously had exposure to a lot of the material. It’s a little unclear why he’s doing the program, but it obviously isn’t for mastering the material, since he already feels he’s got a good grip on the material. When he does decide to grace us with his presence you can tell he’s not taking what he does particularly seriously, he isn’t asking questions, and he’s just going through the motions of the class. It’s a lot of money to not focus on the material. Perhaps he’s just doing it for the contacts during the stage, or perhaps the certificate at the end has more significance than I had imagined. And I think I would have less problems with this if he were doing everything correctly. But he’s not. His hubris has gotten in the way, and rather than taking the class at least as a chance to improve his palate, I feel like he’s just passing through.

Another person in the class also has issues with knowing how to learn. With the other person, hubris is clearly the issue blocking him from getting as much out of the class as he can. With this other person, however, it is more stubbornness. He knows that he has lots to learn, and as such is always getting up there to help out and participate in making the food. Doing is the best way to learn. But the issue is that he just puts on the blinders while working. When an instructor tries to correct his technique, he’ll at least not and listen, but almost never change whatever he’s doing. When a classmate mentions something not happening correctly or safely, it is as if nothing has been said. He doesn’t listen, doesn’t hear, and its gotten to the point where even the least experienced classmates often notice mistakes in technique now, because they’ve all progressed and he hasn’t. Whether this is some kind of machismo or stubborn streak I have yet to figure out, but whatever the reason is, everyone in the class is starting to get tired of things being poorly done.

There are also some people who are striving hard to learn. Not only are they trying to get involved in everything which is being made, but they ask a ton of questions and listen to the answers, no matter who answers. Especially in our class, with all the multicultural backgrounds, there is a lot of dispersed knowledge, and so sometimes the instructors aren’t the best people to answer a question because someone comes from a background where that thing is more common. Seeing these people take full advantage of that fact is really great, and it has actually been exciting to watch them improve.

However learning in the class isn’t directly dependent on getting involved. One person in the class has what I would term some kind of stage fright--despite the fact that there are only nine of us plus the instructor, she gets extremely nervous about doing things for the class because of everyone watching. When she does do something, it’s almost always precise and excellently done, but her nerves get in the way of her trying many things that can be messed up. I try to encourage her to step up and take more risks--these aren’t extremely complex dishes where one step wrong will result in a disaster, but even so she hesitates. However she is clearly learning a ton--her notes are detailed and done in such a way that I have little doubt she will be able to recreate all the recipes when she wants to with little ado.

So where do I fit in on this spectrum? I don’t think I’m either of the first two people, where I refuse to learn. I’m definitely learning a lot from the class, though probably not the same things that the people without kitchen experience are learning. More I’m discovering new flavor profiles, different ways to bring depth to dishes, and cooking techniques demonstrated in a new way. However I don’t think I’m learning much about basic cooking techniques like roasting and sautéing, but I also don’t think that that’s where I’m looking for improvement. I definitely sometimes cross the line between student and teacher, especially when there’s trickier knifework to be done or trussing to happen, but for the most part people don’t seem to mind that, and I try not to force knowledge on others unless there’s a safety issue involved. I know that sometimes I get a little academic in my knowledge and start on diatribes, but again I’m trying to be more aware of it.

At the same time, I’m definitely not always getting my hands in every dish. I am perfectly happy sitting on the sidelines on many occasions, and I think that’s in part because the basic production of Italian food in my head is not technically involved such that if you haven’t felt it yourself you can’t learn it. I think it is much more about timing and quality of ingredients, which are both things you can get from watching and tasting almost exactly as effectively.

Or maybe its because of the trajectory of the course. I was definitely more engaged--both mentally and physically--at the beginning, when everything was new. After almost two months we’ve covered all the basics, and I think a lot of what is going on now is theme and variations. However I’m itching to start the stage to see new material, and have had enough of the repetition. I definitely feel myself more mentally checked out now as the novelty of the coursework wears off. But I also feel like there is not much for me to gain by doing, which could mean my pride is just as pronounced as that one guy’s, but I still feel like I am learning and getting something out of the class. I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time, and I suppose that’s enough.

A Smidgen more on gender

So I just wrote up that whole thing on sexism and all that. I have to say, despite the behavior of this chef, he is a really fabulous teacher and cook.

The other day in class we were waiting for a whole bunch of things to cook, and so he took the moment to give us a little speech. During this entire speech, his face lit up, and you could tell that he was really happy to have this relaxed chance to talk to us, especially since he was now feeling comfortable with us. In the speech he described the passion one needs to cook, and the importance of really loving it if you want to do it professionally. As he said this in his fish print baggy pants and green Birkenstock clogs, you could tell that he had this passion and was excited to see it present even in a few of us. He really loves what he does, and I only hope that I can always feel like him.

Gender in the kitchen

Has the whole gender in the kitchen thing been done to death? Probably yes. But I think here I have encountered a bias for the first time, and I think I also have just recently (aka this week) overcome it.

Of our instructors at school, only one makes me think of a real chef with actual restaurant experience. His demeanor and comportment triggered my trained responses, so when he asked me to do something at the beginning I always replied "Yes, Chef." I had to force myself to humanize him in my head so I could behave like all the other people in the class. Now I just reply "Yes." or "Of course." However part of the reason I think I respond to him differently than the other instructors is that he is male. I am well adjusted to working under women in a kitchen, but even so there's something about a man which elicits a different response. Its stupid, I know, and probably has to do in part with my first culinary school experience as well as my first work experience being underneath very classic male chefs, which has created the association in my head. But that isn't the part which was fascinating to overcome.

This guy has been discriminating ever so slightly against the girls in the class. Or I've been projecting such that I think he has been. I had noticed, however, that whenever he needed a job done right--a piece of meat cut in the correct way, a perfect dice, a good saute of a dish--he would call over one of the boys. Now, this is a reasonable thing to do, logically, because of the four boys, three have worked professionally, and the one who hasn't is the most competent of the non-professional cooks. Furthermore, one or two of the girls get a little grossed out at the idea of gutting fish and removing the heads from chickens, so again, in terms of pure statistics, it makes sense to call on the guys.

But I want to behead chickens too! So I started a campaign to insert myself on his list of competent people who do things right. I started choosing tasks very specifically--anytime anything needed to be chopped evenly, I tried to snag the job. I always asked, "can I try?" when he did a demo, I avoided doing dishes when he was in the middle of something serious, and I tried to never work on the dessert. I tried to act more like the guys (who never ever do dishes unless explicitly asked), and by the end of last week or the beginning of this one I felt like he was starting to see me in a different light. Having to act like one of the guys sounds stupid, but it made the most sense as a good way to get around things. And I don't like doing dishes either, so while it was sort of an asshole move towards my female colleagues, it had its advantages.

Finally this week he asked me what I'm planning on doing after the course, to which I replied that I'm going back to the US to work the line in some restaurant somewhere in DC. He paused. "Have you worked in a restaurant before?" I could see exactly what was going through his head, because it had gone through mine so many times when I had friends or classmates say they want to work in a restaurant, be a cook. Do you know what the sacrifice is? Do you understand the physical stress? The mental stress? The misery? The crappy pay? Do you love it enough? Of course, when he asked me, I was able to laugh. I replied that I've worked in a handful of interesting and diverse places during my summers off from school, and that I love the life. I also replied that I knew exactly what he was thinking, and he smiled back.

Yesterday we were deboning chickens to keep the skin intact. He first asked the boys to start the work, but then when he told them to let some other people take over, he handed one of the knives to me. And I have to say I rocked it :)

Defining American Food

So back to food-related posts....last week was just a little too busy for me to focus on that stuff as much, with a total of some 46 hours spent at and around school, plus the visit to I Tatti, plus attempting to buy a bicycle, plus needing to deal with life in general, etc, etc, and so I got a little overwhelmed. But now we're back on track a bit! Just as a warning, I step up on my soapbox here for quite a bit--its long.
***
This is a prototype of a conversation I've had a few times here:

Italian: No wonder you came to Italy to learn about cooking! Goodness knows there's more to food than hot dogs and hamburgers. Don't get me wrong, I like hot dogs and hamburgers a lot, but American food just isn't as good as Italian or French food.
Me: Well there's lots of great food in the States! And American food isn't just hot dogs and hamburgers.
Italian: Well then what is American food?
Me: Uhhh......

I usually get stuck at this point. I've been thinking a lot about the subject in the past few days, trying to develop a pithy explanation of what American food is all about. What are some quintessential American dishes? The South definitely has their own style of cuisine, with a lot of great, rich food, and I think I could explain that well, but that isn't all of American food. Even within regions of the South there are different styles: cajun, creole, tex-mex, etc. But I wouldn't use any of those foods to describe what American food is.

Regional variation is definitely an important part of a national cuisine. Here in Italy everyone makes pasta, but the southerners do it with different shapes, doughs, and sauces than the northerners do. Each region has its own style of what is essentially fruitcake to be eaten at Christmas, and yet while there are these regional variations, there is an underlying base style of food which everyone adheres to.

The only thing I can think of which follows this line of thought in American food is BBQ. Almost every part of the US does barbecue, but everyone does it in a slightly different way. However I don't think that as a style of cooking it defines our national cuisine in the same way that pasta does Italian food (or mustard for the French!).

Of course there is the argument that America is the big melting pot, and that everyone brought their own cuisine in to the country, and so every household does different food. I suppose this is true, but I also think that the country has been around long enough that despite this a national cuisine could emerge. Or perhaps the States are too big for that to happen. Italy is just slightly bigger than Arizona, and ranks 71st in terms of square footage, just behind Oman. Their population is just under 60 million and shrinking, and so obviously we're talking about a very different situation (CIA factbook). If you asked the residents of Arizona how they define the food of their state, you would get a much more specific answer, and while it might lack some of the variety that Italian food has, they only have 6.5 million people, so we'll let that be their excuse.

Yet despite all of this I feel that there is more to American food than what immigrants have brought in from the old country, and that can be found across the entire country. The difficulty is that its a very simple kind of food, and I would define it almost entirely by how it is ingredient-driven. While we are seeing restaurants pop up everywhere describing themselves as serving "New American" (which I think is actually just a derivative of Californian cuisine as passed down by Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, etc), I think this kind of food is also getting onto the dinner table, at least in the households where people are cooking dinner.

My proof is going to be through the food network. While there has been a lot of discussion lately on whether the food network is actually teaching anyone to cook, a quick glance at their website shows the trends that I think define a lot of American cooking. They have a tab for "in season", which features pumpkins, apples, potatoes, and squash; the first tab listed is "quick and easy", which also is focused mostly on fall ingredients, with things like butternut squash mac & cheese and pear and fennel salad. These kinds of dishes don't belong to another culture's cuisine, and even the ones that can be traced elsewhere culturally seem to have little twists that make them somehow American. Using the "quick meals" tab, I selected that I want a beef dinner that can be made in less than 45 minutes, to which it supplied quite a few options. The "lime marinated flank steak with herb salad" has a title which makes me think that it will be based on Mexican or central American flavors, because of the limes, but looking over the ingredient list the marinade also includes balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The herb salad mixes basil, cilantro, parsley, and tarragon. I could find everything for this recipe here except the cilantro and maybe the tarragon. I haven't seen them anywhere since arriving, and the limes would have to be considered an import item because they aren't really common in the cuisine here. So here we go, a dish offered up on TV by some guy named Danny Boome who has a show, and people cook it. But how do you define a cuisine like this?

The best explanation I can come up with is ingredient-driven. While that makes sense in an American context, the only problem with it is that in large parts of the world (here included), food is always ingredient-driven. It is hard to find bad produce here. I haven't seen things around that aren't in season somewhere in the country, and it was considered unusual that the supermarket had to import their lemons from Spain. That's about 500 miles, which is just a little further than Chicago to Nashville. However in the States ingredient-driven means a little more than just in season or local (though they're getting to be more and more synonymous), but it means keeping things simple to let the ingredients shine. Nothing about that steak is particularly flashy, the flavors aren't masking anything, and I imagine all the ingredients balance pretty nicely so nothing is overwhelmed. In Italian cuisine, a ragù is made with so many different ingredients that there is often no way to know all that went in there (think about the beef in dolce e forte I featured a few weeks ago). These are definitely two distinct approaches to food.

I am definitely still not satisfied with this as an explanation, not only because it doesn't quite do justice to American food, but because saying that another cuisine doesn't focus on ingredients to let them shine is also wrong. The bistecca fiorentina (Florentine Steak) that they serve here is nothing more than a whole lot of beef with salt and pepper cooked very briefly on the grill. Straightforward and simple, it is nothing but the one ingredient.

However I feel like as someone who wants to cook so-called "American" food, I do need to be able to define what it is to a certain extent. Fusion and multicultural make it sound like it is just a remix of some other foods, which also happens to imply that it is inferior, which I don't believe it is. I want to find a definition, a way of explaining to people what American food actually consists of. And perhaps if its successful, maybe one day the stereotypical American dish won't be a hot dog!

I got a feelin'...woo hoo

I wanted to start with this which was forwarded to me from Not Always Right:

Female Conference Attendee: “Where’s the cook? This food is amazing, and I want to give my regards to the cook.”
Me: “That’s great to hear – if you wait a moment, I’ll get him out of the back.”
(I return with the cook.)
Me: “This is ****, and he is our head cook.”
Attendee: *looking behind the head cook* “No, seriously – where’s the cook? I need to talk with her.”
Cook: “Ma’am, I am the cook. How can I help you?”
Attendee: *looking askance* “You are NOT the cook. You cannot BE the cook. The food here is so wonderful, so full of love – it MUST be cooked by a woman.”
Cook: “All right, you caught us. The real cook has her day off today. We’ll thank her when she gets back tomorrow.”
Attendee: “Yes, you will.” *muttering as she walks away* “Men who cook…sheesh.”
 ****
 I went out again on Saturday. This time I didn't have to be dressed up by someone else, but took the initiative into my own hands and bought a shiny top.

Again I went over to Fernanda's house for dinner and to get dressed. This time was much less chaotic, as not only did I get there all by myself (I even remembered the street!) but it was apparent that my Italian has improved because I was able to follow a lot more that was happening linguistically speaking. Hooray for tangible improvements!

Just like last time some old guy with a car picked us up (it was a mercedes). The club ended up being really close to my house (for once, something nearby me!) and I was the only one who had ever heard of the street, so I was the one giving directions, ironically. Of course I thought it was a different street than it actually was, which meant that my directions ended up being wrong, but it was okay because this being Italy, when we got to the door it was still closed. Things start very late here.

While waiting for the club to open we ran into the people we were supposed to meet (three men--are we sensing a theme here?). They were very cordial and we started having a great conversation about South Park, Florentine offal sandwiches (yum!), and Obama (everyone wants to talk about Obama here).

Even though we were in Italy, Halloween was still an event. It seemed like guys liked to wear the pointed hats, while women were dressed up mostly in angel and devil costumes, though I saw some other outfits on occasion. However it was definitely a very small majority of people who had dressed up for the event. I considered the fact that I had put on eyeliner costume enough.

At the club we had gotten a table reserved, which meant that we had to pay a lot more. However Fernanda explained that that was what the guys were for. She was very adamant about that part, and even when it came time to leave and they were short a little bit, she made it seem like us ladies were not supposed to contribute. I contributed anyway.

Just like last time, the music started out really fun (the Black Eyed Peas song is really really popular right now, hence the title. Also some song that I have started to identify as the "Ba da dah dah dah" song, because those are the majority of the lyrics, but its such a great melody that everyone sings along, and it suits drunken voices rather well. It may or may not be in Spanish. If I discover what it is, I'll let you know) and as the night went on the melodies went away and the music became very repetitive and rather boring. Its really sort of odd that the music gets so much work every night, though it seems like other people don't mind the degeneration and actually seem to like it. Philistines. In this picture is Maya, Fernanda, and me, in that order. Maya is Fernanda's roommate.

Of the guys we were with, one I hardly talked to, one talked to me too much and too obnoxiously, and one asked me for translations of the lyrics of many songs. The one who was obnoxious was not just obnoxious in speech, but as the night went on he was obnoxious in conduct as well. It is not appropriate to grab someone's head in your hands when dancing, and never should you shove a hand in someone's face. I started faking being tired so that he could stop harassing me. If he wasn't Fernanda's friend I would have been much more rude. Here's your mug shot for anyone who ever finds themselves in a Florentine club. Note the closeness of him shoving into me.

I think these experiences are really anthropological in many ways. While I enjoy going out for about an hour, after that hour I'm really ready to leave as I'm hot, tired, and usually the music has taken a turn for the worse. But its interesting to watch everything happening, and to attempt conversations with people, at least until your throat gets sore from shouting. I'm definitely a prop for the girls when we go out, their american friend to use as a shield from ex boyfriends (as Maya did), or as an excuse to take a ridiculous number of photos of herself (as Fernanda did). But I honestly do enjoy myself, even if I don't enjoy everything about the experience. And this time I got to go home to sleep in my own bed!

Villa I Tatti

Harvard has a research center which focuses mostly on Italian renaissance studies, but is really for anything Italy related. It happens that this place, the Villa I Tatti, is just outside of Florence (less than 20 minutes by bus) and I was lucky enough to find out about it and to be allowed to visit and go on a tour.

The area was unbelievably beautiful, and it was hard to believe that it was so close to the city! I was entranced by the bright colors in the ivy lining a house on the main road, and the walk up the hill to the villa was equally beautiful and pastoral:

 You tour the villa itself because it has a historically significant garden, as well as a spectacular collection of Byzantine art. I arrived early and met a grad student there who is studying there for the semester; besides him and one other grad student there are 15 post-doctoral fellows. He and I are going to do dinner sometime. Hooray for more friends!

The gardens were absolutely lovely. There were lots of plants around with lovely scents, including lemon trees at almost every corner, and so you were not only visually engaged in the garden but olfactory-ally as well. The way the garden was designed meant that around every corner there was a surprise. While the garden pictured here is lovely, can you see through the archway? That archway is for the limoneria, a barn for storing lemon trees through the winter, and as you pass through it there are a huge set of stairs dropping down into a completely different style of garden. Let me zoom in for you:

You see? Totally different garden around the corner. It was really lovely, and I got to enjoy the tour in the company of Charlie and Susan, friends of my family who live around the corner from us in Chicago. Our tour guide was also named Susan. Oh, the coincidences!

The art collection was lovely, but you'll have to go to I Tatti's website for more info on it, as I wasn't allowed to take pictures and can't remember much about it anyway. But it was a beautiful mansion, though it felt more like a few rooms connected to a lot of library (which we weren't allowed into, sadly). The research center was wonderfully relaxing, and definitely felt more like Italy than Harvard, though I imagine things would be different if I had seen people getting work done.

After the tour I got to stay for tea, which was done in a proper British style and was really lovely and fun. I got to talk with Susan the guide some more and met one of the other people who works there who I had been in contact with to arrange the tour. We discussed the differences between the Villa and the American Academy in Rome, and conversed about life in Italy for expats. I thought it was a lovely place, surrounded by lovely countryside (and some 80 acres of grape and olive farms, or something like that), and had a very academic air to it. How beautiful!

Here's a little more randomness

Dear people who read my blog,

Tonight I need your help. I have a couple of problems which I need responses for. Email me, skype me, or use the comments tool below to help me out (please!)

First question (medical): My ankle has been hurting when I walk for about two weeks now.  It has not been constant pain, and it is not related to my shoes (I've tried several pairs for several days in a row to no avail). There is no swelling, the hurt one is a little bit warmer than the good one, but that could be because I'm determined to find some symptom of the pain. Its been getting worse over time. I feel like if I go to a doctor he'll reply "there's nothing I can do". What should I do? I might buy a bicycle next week (I tried last week and this one to no avail--Italy!) which would get me using it less, but not by much. I need to be on my feet anyway for school. Should I go to a doctor anyway? Does anyone know of good ankle exercises? Should I use a brace? Should I just ignore it and hope it goes away?

Second question (culinary): There are lots of quinces starting to pop up at the market here. As this is not an ingredient I get to play with easily in the US, I'm going to buy some this weekend and use it. I was thinking of doing a jam, since there don't seem to be many other things to do with the fruit, but am not sure I want to just do an old-fashioned straight up simple jam. Any ideas on what quince might go well with? I saw a recipe for quince and vanilla, but would love any other ideas/suggestions.

Third question (mental health): I was in class almost continuously for eight hours today, cooking. I came home, did some shopping, and went back to cooking (dinner). I picked something trick just 'cuz. Then I thought about my whole baked goods project, and instead of making the easy scones I was going to do, I made an apple pie, complete with lattice top. I think I'm addicted to cooking. As you can see from my previous question, I'm already thinking about the next project. Is this healthy? I had things I was going to do tonight, like blog about my visit to Villa I Tatti and showering. (I was not going to blog about showering. That was a different thing I was going to do tonight.) I guess its good that I want to do this professionally, since I can't seem to tire of it....

Anyway, that's what's going on for now. If you have any info/advice about any of this, let me know! I'm going to go check on my pie to see if its cooking well.....

Also: Just saw this on the NYT blog. Its the 1st 50 rules for waiters, and it is really interesting to read. I definitely agree with it!